Ah, thanks for the clarification -- our thinking has a lot more in common than I thought. FWIW, I'm no economist either. I did major in Political Economy for a short while, but that just means that I had enough time to gobble up some conventional thinking on the matter (including that strict definition of raw materials) -- if I judge by my classmates in those courses, my studies are certainly no guarantee that I understand anything at all about the real world :-).
I don't have a lot of time right now, but in brief -- I like the way Warren Buffett puts it when he mentions that we're all indebted to the "ovarian lottery" for much of what we have in life... if he'd have been born in some poor African country, there's little chance he'd have had the success he has, because they don't have "raw material" (in your sense of the word) necessary to take his talent and create wealth out of it.
Also -- you're perfectly right that a lot of the conflict in a place like the Congo is caused by conflict over raw resources. I was using that sort of example to show how an abundance of raw material doesn't necessarily lead to wealth "in general" for the country; it can actually have the opposite effect.
I don't have a lot of time right now, but in brief -- I like the way Warren Buffett puts it when he mentions that we're all indebted to the "ovarian lottery" for much of what we have in life... if he'd have been born in some poor African country, there's little chance he'd have had the success he has, because they don't have "raw material" (in your sense of the word) necessary to take his talent and create wealth out of it.
Also -- you're perfectly right that a lot of the conflict in a place like the Congo is caused by conflict over raw resources. I was using that sort of example to show how an abundance of raw material doesn't necessarily lead to wealth "in general" for the country; it can actually have the opposite effect.